


hospital roof

by yhighon



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Killing Game Was A Virtual Reality Simulation (Dangan Ronpa), New Dangan Ronpa V3 Spoilers, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon, Post-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, kind of, lots of suicidal ideation, you can guess my feelings on kaede from this lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:22:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26754244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yhighon/pseuds/yhighon
Summary: they sit together on the roof, brought together by shared alienation. similar, and yet different, they sit there, listening to the cars go by on the highway below, and coexist with their shared misery, one dying, one already dead.(saihara and ouma talk on the roof)
Relationships: Oma Kokichi & Saihara Shuichi, Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 95





	hospital roof

“i wish i was dead.” saihara says, and ouma doesn’t turn, isn’t even surprised. it’s a sentiment ouma can share (though it’s a matter of wishing he stayed dead), but he won’t admit to that. 

“why?” he says instead, his fingers pushing around a piece of gravel on the concrete.

they’re sitting on the roof of the hospital. it’s dark outside, but the lights akin to the ones on the highway below illuminate the roof. ouma is pretty sure the nurses will come looking for them soon.

“things would have been so much easier, if i had just died then. it would have been over.” saihara says, and ouma bites back the urge to call him an idiot.

“you would have woken up anyway.” he points out, “seen my pretty face the moment you stepped out of the pod the same way.” 

saihara doesn’t say anything. ouma wonders if his response pissed him off. he thinks if saihara said that to him he would laugh. 

but humor has always been ouma’s coping mechanism, not saihara’s. the detective would rather bottle it up until it comes rushing out, an ugly waterfall of emotion that hardly anybody is allowed to see. saihara would rather take it out on his own body, with the blades that the nurses don’t know about, then let the world see how he actually is.

ouma is similar, in that regard. content to let things eat him alive until he’s nothing but bones. 

he’s always thought that they were similar. a lying truth-seeker and a truth-seeking liar, the same side of an ugly, unforgiving coin. he wonders if they did that on purpose.

but he also knows there’s key differences. people like saihara, trust him. almost everyone avoids ouma, the nurses included. he doesn’t even blame them.

“maybe if i were dead, i wouldn’t feel so guilty.” saihara says, an afterthought. 

it’s another key difference in them. ouma ~~is~~ was the antagonist, the one who didn’t want to die but was forced to, in order to follow through on a half-baked plan that failed. saihara ~~is~~ was the protagonist, the one who wanted to die from the very beginning but was forced to live, and watch the rest of them drop like flies, their death warrant served as soon as he pronounced them guilty.

“if you were dead, you wouldn’t feel anything.” ouma says, pointing out the obvious. saihara’s suicidal ideation had always been prevalent, but their talks on the roof has it coming out in waves, in a way that makes ouma hold his breath whenever he goes to see saihara, waiting for the day when he finds out that saihara has killed himself, and nobody told him.

he likes to think that momota, at least, would tell him. they’d reached an understanding at the moment of ouma’s death, when momota hit the button that had the press coming down on top of him. watching the metal slab drop down together, leaving the ultimate astronaut to watch as ugly neon pink blood drenched the press, the room, everything.

sometimes, ouma’s eyelids are still stained bright pink.

“yeah.” saihara says, breaking ouma’s train of thought. they sit in silence for a moment, on the roof, two people who are isolated, away from the rest of the group, one intentionally and one not. 

they’ve noticed each other’s alienation, and gotten closer from it. ended up at the same odd places, hiding from the white walls of the hospital. the security cameras watch them self-destruct anyway, cold and jaded, much like the nurses that care for them.

all of them avoid the nurses, the tired team danganronpa employees who remind them a bit too much of tsumugi. the nurses pick favorites as revenge, ouma can tell, choosing from who they liked best during the show. 

right now, they’re overly fond of akamatsu, amami, and tojo (but that’s probably just because she helps pick up after the rest of them. if she isn’t moving, she’ll combust). the whole thing is unprofessional, but the nurses don’t get reprimanded, and it goes on.

ouma prefers it that way, anyway.

“akamatsu was looking for you.” ouma says, and he doesn’t miss the way saihara flinches when he says her name. 

“i know.” he says, because of course he is. of course saihara is avoiding her. “i don’t want to talk to her.” 

ouma doesn’t have anything to say to that. saihara goes on.

“i hate her.” he said, eyes fixed on the concrete ground. ouma wishes he would cry instead. the saihara he’d known from the game would have cried, if they’d had this conversation then. “i look at her and i see a corpse. i hate her for dying. for getting executed. for preaching to us about how we should work together and then going behind everyone’s backs.”

saihara takes in a breath, something shaky that betrays his emotions.

“i hate myself for watching her do it.”

“we all did.” ouma says, bringing his knees into his chest. it’s not exactly what saihara is referring to, but it’s true nonetheless. they’d watched in horror as saihara condemned her, proved that she’d killed rantaro amami.

the fact that she wasn’t the one to actually kill amami isn’t important, because it was only because akamatsu’s plan failed that she didn’t. the intent was still there, and akamatsu herself thought she killed him.

ouma wonders how waking up to amami being alive went.

“i hate her for trying to make it better. for trying to become friends, real friends, after everything that happened.” saihara says bitterly. there’s an always an overarching bitterness when saihara talks about akamatsu, a selfish anger that ouma understands all too well. 

he thinks about the way akamatsu and momota argue in the hallways, in group therapy. he knows momota feels similarly.

he knows that akamatsu tried to reconnect with saihara almost as soon as the killing game ended. tried to befriend everyone, actually, as soon as they woke up from the simulation. many of them easily forgave her, forgiveness being even easier when amami told them what really happened, even before saihara managed to figure it out in the sixth trial.

but ouma doesn’t forgive her. not when he sits here with saihara, the one who had to shoulder the rest of it. the one who kept moving, kept going, no matter what. the one who didn’t preach about friendship and unity, then try to kill someone in a deadly act of hypocrisy. 

he thinks saihara ran the trials out of nothing but adrenaline and logic. emotions on lockdown, waiting to break down later, after the trial. 

it’s a tactic ouma used liberally during the killing game.

“i hate it too.” ouma says. he doesn’t hate akamatsu (in fact she’s one of the few people in their group of sixteen that he’d genuinely liked) but he understands the sentiment. momota does the same thing to him, hovering, making sure he’s alright. the difference is that ouma lets him, because momota has to get over his guilt somehow, or he’ll explode and take the rest of them with him.

but saihara is willing to let akamatsu drown in it. just like the detective himself is.

they sit in silence for a moment, listening to the cars pass on the highway below them. saihara shivers in the cool air, not quite winter but not still autumn. 

they sit like that, two people who don’t know how to be people anymore. their lives as members of society were signed away the moment they signed the contract to be part of danganronpa.

(they weren’t even people when they signed the contract, just nobodies who were waiting for a change, or for it to end. nobody that’s doing well signs up for a televised killing game.)

ouma lets his head fall onto saihara’s shoulder, a silent show of trust in the former detective. saihara lets his lean on top, and they sit there, on the roof of the hospital.

(eventually, an irritated nurse comes for them.)


End file.
